Holiday Inn Speeds Check-In with Mobile Key

| April 25, 2012

The Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites in Marion, Ill., will be the first hotel in Illinois to allow guests to bypass the front desk process and unlock their room door with their mobile device. The solution, developed by Chicago-based OpenWays, allows any mobile phone to optionally act as a room key for the entire guest stay. The new construction 105 room Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites - Marion will open in early May. The property is developed by Carbondale based Hotel Builders of America and is managed by Monchino Management, LLC. Reed Station Hotels, LLC is the owner. The owners of Reed Station are Charlie and Trace Brown of Carbondale. The Brown’s currently own the Holiday Inn and Houlihan’s Restaurant in Carbondale.

The OpenWays service enhances the guest experience by providing the choice of a self-service ‘direct to room’ option for customers who prefer to use their mobile device as their room key. Ultimate service is about offering freedom of choice and options to guests – and increasingly guests are choosing to exploit the mobile technology in their hands rather than wait in line to collect a traditional plastic key card.

OpenWays uses a Crypto Acoustic Credential (CAC) and text messaging to securely deliver a unique acoustic key to the guest anywhere in the world. The CAC solution can be retrofitted to the major electronic locks on the market. It is compatible with all 6 billion mobile phones in the world, including all cell phone network technologies (GSM, UMTS, CDMA, 3GCDMA, 4G, LTE, WIMAX...) and ALL Mobile OS standards (Blackberry, Apple iPhone, Symbian, Google Android, JAVA J2ME, Microsoft Windows mobile and more). The Holiday Inn Express & Suites Marion will feature the KABA Saflok RT RFID electronic-locking system with OpenWays’ mobile key solution built in.